Syria’s Fate Hinges on Whom It Hates Most, U.S. or Iran?

By Karim Sadjadpour and Firas Maksad -
Feb 5, 2013

As Syria’s President Bashar Al-Assad
clings mercilessly to power, hopes that his regime will be
replaced by a stable, tolerant democracy are being dwarfed by
fears of prolonged sectarian strife and Islamist radicalism. The
outcome will hinge in part on a simple question: Whom do Syria’s
diverse rebels hate more, the U.S. or Iran?

The anomaly of power in modern Syria -- where an Alawite
minority rules over a Sunni Arab majority -- was never
sustainable, and few countries stand to lose more from the
regime’s collapse than the Islamic Republic of Iran. Syria has
been Iran’s only consistent ally since the 1979 revolution,
providing the leadership in Tehran with a crucial thoroughfare
to Iran’s most important regional asset, the Lebanese Shiite
militant group Hezbollah.

As a result, Iran has done its utmost to keep Assad afloat,
providing billions of dollars of support as well as strategic
aid to crush dissent. To relieve pressure on the Syrian
military, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps is
reportedly training two paramilitary organizations, Jaysh al
Sha’abi and the Shabiha, which boast 50,000 fighters and are
modeled on the Bassij militia that violently quashed Iran’s 2009
popular uprisings.

Strategic Choice

This support can only delay, not prevent, Assad’s demise.
Thereafter Iran will face a strategic decision: whether to
continue supporting a predominantly Alawite militia that
represents only a small fraction of Syrian society, or to engage
the Sunni Islamists who are poised to wield power in Damascus
once Assad falls. Iran’s leaders will try to embrace the Sunni
radicals, and if that fails they will work with the Shabiha to
prevent the formation of a stable, anti-Iranian order in Syria.

What’s most important for Iran is not the sectarian makeup
of Syria’s future rulers, but a like-minded ideological
worldview premised on resistance to the U.S. and Israel. As
Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei once said, “We will support
and help any nations, any groups fighting against the Zionist
regime across the world.” Iran’s Sunni allies Hamas and
Palestinian Islamic Jihad are cases in point.

Despite sharing common enemies with some Syrian rebels,
there is no guarantee that Iran will be able to befriend the
same forces it has helped to massacre over the past two years.
Anti-Shiite, anti-Persian sentiment is rife among Syria’s
rebels, and the attraction of Iranian petrolargesse is eclipsed
by the deeper pockets of Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

The question for the U.S. and allies such as Turkey is what
can they do to ensure that moderate factions in the Syrian
opposition come to dominate in a post-Assad Syria, and that they
will prefer to work with the U.S. and its friends in the region,
rather than with Iran.

That outcome isn’t guaranteed, either. Iranian influence
tends to thrive in countries suffering power vacuums and tumult,
which they can attribute to U.S. or Israeli policies. They
helped create Hezbollah after the 1982 Israeli invasion of
civil-war era Lebanon. And in the aftermath of the 2003 U.S.
invasion of Iraq, they helped entrench an Iraqi political class
that is closer to Iran than the U.S. As Israel’s minister of
strategic affairs, Moshe Ya’alon, put it last year: “The
Iranians know how to exploit every area and country that isn’t
properly governed.”

Sordid History

This sordid history has made the Barack Obama
administration reluctant to decisively enter the Syria fray,
fearful of being sucked into an Islamist brier patch or another
costly but fruitless exercise in nation-building.

Benign neglect, however, hasn’t been so benign. Syria’s
humanitarian crisis has reached epic proportions, with more than
60,000 people killed and 2.5 million people displaced. The sense
of abandonment and desperation felt by many Syrians has served
to strengthen the most radical elements of the rebel forces,
some of whom are thought to be aligned with al-Qaeda.

Syria’s hemorrhaging will continue to fuel radicalism until
there is a change of political leadership in Damascus. In order
to expedite this process, the U.S. administration must inhibit
Iran’s ability to arm and finance Assad.

This requires coercing the Iraqi government -- the
beneficiary of $2 billion in annual U.S. military aid -- to halt
the steady transit of Iranian military hardware and personnel to
Syria. It also means making clear to Lebanon that it must
curtail Hezbollah’s cross-border operations into Syria, and
ensure that Iran can’t use Lebanese banks to evade international
sanctions. The U.S. and its allies should expose the governments
of both countries as abettors to Assad’s criminal regime, should
they continue to be complicit in Iran’s operations.

Concurrently, the U.S. and like-minded allies such as
Turkey should strengthen the competence and cohesiveness of the
National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition
Forces, the exiled body they helped shape. This might encourage
reluctant fence sitters to abandon Assad’s ship, shortening the
duration of what will otherwise be an increasingly sectarian
conflict.

Aid channeled through the opposition council, in
coordination with credible international nonprofit
organizations, should provide for millions who have been
displaced. Not doing so risks leaving Iran and radical Sunni
Islamists to exploit human suffering for recruitment purposes.

A nascent rebel joint military command, working under the
opposition council, would allow anti-regime forces to better
coordinate operations and steer fighters away from jihadi
ideology, and could lay the foundation for a future national
army. Military assistance, direct from the U.S. or through
regional allies, must flow through this joint command. Doing so
will afford moderates a better chance to succeed against both
the Iranian-backed militias and the growing numbers of Sunni
jihadists who are fighting in Syria.

A greater U.S. role won’t render Syria an American-allied
democracy. That possibility, if it ever existed, has long been
lost. But continued U.S. inaction risks leaving Syria at the
mercy of Iran and Sunni extremists whose intolerance, and hatred
of the U.S., dwarfs any concerns they may have for the well-
being of Syria and its people. Such an outcome would haunt
Syria, the Middle East and the U.S. for years to come.

(Karim Sadjadpour is a senior associate at the Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace. Firas Maksad is director of
New Policy Advisors, a Washington advisory group. The opinions
expressed are their own. You can follow them on twitter at
Sadjadpour and Maksad.)

To contact the writers of this article:
Karim Sadjadpour at Karim.sadjadpour@ceip.org and Firas Maksad
at firasmaksad@gmail.com.